UCU Strike Poems 10 – from A New Guide, by Kenneth Koch

from A New Guide

7

Look at this arch.
It is part of a building more than seven hundred years old.
Every day from the time he was eighteen, probably, the man who made it
worked in stone.
Sometimes he had a day off — the stone would be in his mind.
He would find in his mind ideas for patterns, lines, and angles.
Now those ideas are gone.
We have a different art.
But for what we believe most we don’t have art at all.

Kenneth Koch, from One Train

The university that I work for is currently in conflict with the union that I belong to, the UCU, over Universities UK’s (UUK) proposed changes to the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS).

This has resulted in lecturers like me taking strike action.

You can read more about the reasons some of us have for taking this action here and here.

For the next few days of strike action I am going to be posting poems on my blog whose subject matter is the world of work and/or education.

On this twelfth day of strike action we read an extract from A New Guide, by Kenneth Koch.

You can follow the #USSStrike hashtag on Twitter here and the #UCUStrike hashtag here.

If you can take the time to retweet or share this poem via social media I would be so grateful.

The views posted in this blog are mine alone and do not represent those of my employer.